1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to conveyors and, more particularly, to methods and devices for transferring and for processing of flexible, two-dimensional products, such as printed products.
2. Discussion of Related Art
In the conveyor technology and, in particular, conveyor technology for the conveyance of flexible, two-dimensional objects such as printed products, it is known in the art to convey such flexible, two-dimensional objects, or printed products, with the help of grippers that grasp the objects and serve as transporters. In particular, the products are conveyed from one workstation to the next workstation with the help of such gripper transporters. Each gripper transporter is, as a rule, driven at the same time and is controlled separately. This demands a corresponding number of drive units and controllers, which concomitantly requires a correspondingly high expense invested in capital equipment and in the maintenance of that equipment.
Transport between the workstations is effected along working paths with such gripper transporters, which are not at all flexible in use. If one working step is to be omitted from the manufacturing process, then a new transport path needs to be constructed to pass the associated workstation; moreover, when a workstation is removed from the working path, a transport path with a gripper transporter needs to span the space of the workstation that was removed. Consequently, I have discovered that any change in the work flow process may be both time and cost intensive.
Examples of such inflexible working paths are disclosed in a patent entitled Process And Device For Handling Printed Products by Ernst Luthi, issued as EP 0762950 B1, and in a patent entitled Improvements In Printing Machines by Herbert Fumival, et al., issued as GB 5861 on the 9 Feb. 1910. In GB 5861, the printed product to be cut is carried by the grippers of a gripper transporter to a cutting station, is transferred to the cutting station, and after the cutting, is transported away from the cutting station by way of either the grippers of the same transporter or by the grippers of a second gripper transporter connected downstream. In EP 0762950, the printed products that are conveyed during the cutting process are transferred to tension clips in order to stabilize these products during the cutting process, and are held in a fixed position. The grippers of the gripper transporter remain allocated during the cutting process to the printed products held by the tensioning clips so that the printed products are supplied to the cutting station and are led away from the cutting station again in each case by the same grippers.
In both devices, the cutting stations are a fixed component of the transport device. Such devices however, provide only desultory satisfaction of contemporary demands for a rapid resetting of the production line, e.g. a switch in production from large daily newspapers to weekly magazines, brochures and to different newspapers and magazines of varying size.